= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
victordrake comments on Pascal's Muggle: Infinitesimal Priors and Strong Evidence - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (404)
Indeed, you can't ever present a mortal like me with evidence that has a likelihood ratio of a googolplex to one - evidence I'm a googolplex times more likely to encounter if the hypothesis is true, than if it's false - because the chance of all my neurons spontaneously rearranging themselves to fake the same evidence would always be higher than one over googolplex. You know the old saying about how once you assign something probability one, or probability zero, you can never change your mind regardless of what evidence you see? Well, odds of a googolplex to one, or one to a googolplex, work pretty much the same way."
On the other hand, if I am dreaming, or drugged, or crazy, then it DOESN'T MATTER what I decide to do in this situation. I will still be trapped in my dream or delusion, and I won't actually be five dollars poorer because you and I aren't really here. So I may as well discount all probability lines in which the evidence I'm seeing isn't a valid representation of an underlying reality. Here's your $5.
Are you sure? I would expect that it's possible to recover from that, and some actions would make you more likely to recover than others.
If all of my experiences are dreaming/drugged/crazy/etc. experiences then what decision I make only matters if I value having one set of dreaming/drugged/crazy experiences over a different set of such experiences.
The thing is, I sure do seem to value having one set of experiences over another. So if all of my experiences are dreaming/drugged/crazy/etc. experiences then it seems I do value having one set of such experiences over a different set of such experiences.
So, given that, do I choose the dreaming/drugged/crazy/etc. experience of giving you $5 (and whatever consequences that has?). Or of refusing to give you $5 (and whatever consequences that has)? Or something else?
But that would destroy your ability to deal with optical illusions and misdirection.
Perhaps I should say ...in which I can't reasonably expect to GET evidence entangled with an underlying reality.